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Tuesday, 2 April 2013

Make your own Cress Egg Head!

Here's another great project for Easter time and Spring too. To be honest it's a good one for any other time of the year as well and is a great one to repeat over and over again. We did ours over the Easter time period, a great one to do as it involves eggs.

This is a great project for primary school aged children for the fun factor but also cress seeds grow very quickly so it's brilliant even for tiny tots and they have great fun trimming their Egg Heads hair too and use it to make egg and cress sandwiches. We've done it loads of times before and it's always a hit in our house. My eldest, now 10, loved being all creative and doing something different with the egg this year: a bird cress egg. I love the arty stuff she's getting up to at the moment.

It's an old but good one and all you will need is:- An egg- Pens or paint- cotton wool or kitchen roll- googly eyes (optional)- An egg carton- Cress seeds- Scissors

STEP ONE

First you will need an egg. We like to boil ours and make egg and soldiers! Remember heat the water to boiling before you but your eggs in and then it's 4 minutes for soft boiled 5-6 minutes for medium boiled (how I like it) and 7 minute for hard boiled. When you crack the top off your egg only take about this much off. I like to use a knife for mine as I find it makes it look neater. Eat the inside of your egg and then save the shells.STEP TWO

Decorate your shell as you like. Here's some examples of how we done ours...

STEP THREE

We cut our egg cartons into little chairs or thrones. I used a knife to do this but scissors would do.

STEP FOUR

Then decorate your throne, or seat how you like. Use pens, paints, sequins stickers whatever you feel like.

STEP FIVEThen soak your cotton wool in water - we use a small bowl of water for this. Carefully fill your now empty shell with the cotton wool, pop them into an egg carton throne and sprinkle some cress seed on top. STEP SIXName all your eggy friends. I named Harmonie's Eggbert this time.

Make sure you put them in a sunny place like a window sill have gets a lot of light. Don't forget to explain why we are doing this; it's a great time to talk about photosynthesis. Talking about why it needs water is important too and why it doesn't need soil.

Check your cress everyday and then, when the cress has grown enough, get your scissors out and give your eggy friend a hair cut. Don't forget to use your cress to make something yummy, whether it be added to sandwich or sprinkled over a salad or your boiled potatoes, we always like to make egg cress and mayonnaise sandwiches when we do ours. The old ones are the best!

Things that can be learnt from this project:

How seeds grow

photosynthesis

That when you boil and egg the inside goes hard and this is an irreversible reaction